HD 'Epilogue'
by tigersilver
Summary: Hogwarts, towards the end of 8th Year. Draco muses on a chilly April's night, and is grateful.


HD 'Epilogue'

Author: tigersilver

Fandom: HP  
Pairing: D/H  
Rating: G  
WC: 790  
Warnings: AU; EWE; Hogwarts, towards the end of 8th Year. MPREG implied!  
Summary: A drowsy Draco muses over the importance of contact, one chill spring night. 

_For easilymused1956, who wanted MPREG or 'Draco with baby', this is for you! I've cheated a bit, and written ahead of myself: this is actually for a fic I've started and am still writing (which is in fact, partially posted on my LJ, but some time ago.)  
I hope you like! _

**0o0**

Contact.

Contact.

Draco had had very little of it, really, in a lifetime. Oh, he remembered the touch of his parent's hands: his mother's, pale and pretty, cool and dry on his shoulder or laid gently at the small of his back; his father's, larger and long-fingered, just like his, and firm to the point of painful pressure, at times. Guiding him, steering him, both, and teaching him a silent lesson of the absence of additional contact. That it was prudent, perhaps, not to give too much of it away.

Now he had it, in abundance. From the feel of the plush upholstered pillows at his back, slippery and soft where his thin jersey had ridden up, exposing spine and waist, to the warmth flowing into his arms and thighs and knees—even down to his narrow feet and ankles, where they met and matched Harry's. From the pads of his fingertips, lightly laid across an eggshell thin skull covered with downy white-blond peach fuzz, and the tickle of straw silk in his nose from Harry's rumpled hair, to the quiet heave of rising and falling ribs caught between the cage of Draco's elbows, to the sag of Harry's bent knees, cradled carefully within the arc of his own.

Contact. Senses overflowing with it, so that all his ears could hear was the sound of three sets of lungs breathing—two full-size and one very small—in time, and the crackle of the fire against the chill of a night in April. The muted whisper of fabric: their infant son's feather-soft cotton swaddling and the denim rubbing from Harry's Muggle jeans and his own where they met; the woven wool-and-silk of their two sweaters, tiny loops of thread catching and releasing with every breath and every muffled sound of sleep.

Contact. Black hair and a blond almost invisible; skin as pale as white rose petals and skin as fine-grained as satin and burnished with faint gold. All present and accounted for, available to the touch, when and as Draco desired it. And so very warm, all of that, with the three of them radiating body heat to the chill night air: they hardly needed the baby's blanket Molly Weasley had provided, or the knitted throw the Headmistress had presented, now tangled 'round their bare feet.

Sight. Almost as good as touch; a feast for the eyes. Fans of eyelashes—one sooty-dark and the other nearly translucent, full and spreading across faintly blue-shadowed hollows-Harry's, of course, as he still tired so easily ; the other short and curling, fluttering moth-like as their son squirmed a barest millimeter this way and that, securely buoyed up in Harry 's arms—and Draco's, beyond that. Draco watched them move with musing eyes, and was in silent awe: each individual lash a thread of perfection. He knew, too, what jewels they hid, under thinnest shields of parchment skin: green as deep as as polished malachite or sometimes a sparkling, vivid emerald, Harry's. Their son's eyes were startlingly lighter, reflecting shades of teal and aquamarine as they changed, but his unfocussed pale blue gaze was gradually sharpening, even in the space of a night. One day, they'd be as dark and deep as his father's: a changeable forest of emotion, twiggy branches snagging Draco's very soul.

Odour. Half-asleep, Draco smelt smoke from the fire, applewood scented; citrusy shampoo and aftershave from Harry's lolling head as it shifted against his jaw and neck. Talcum and sweet-sour milk from the baby and, overlaying it all, the faint whiff of brandy fumes rising invisible from their set-aside balloon glasses, as the aged liquid evaporated in the shared heat of the fire. Contact: warm, and warm, and hot, deep in its core. More even than the muted crackle of the fire or the cloth and fabric cocooning them.

Contact.

Harry sighed in his sleep, dreaming perhaps, and turned his head ever so slightly, aping the fragile movements of the baby he held, propped safely within his so-careful arms and the snug space his drawn-up legs made his lap. Draco shifted as well, adjusting; tightening an arm here, a hand there: constant contact. Contact made; contact maintained.

Magical, that. He'd not known it could be something to revel in till Hogwarts, and that had merely been body-to-body. He'd not realized the effect upon the whole of him until just shy of a year ago, and he'd never thought—never even considered-that he might become so dependent upon it: upon this, _this_ particular source of it, held so very carefully now that he'd managed to grasp it and keep firm hold. He'd not known that he'd choose death willingly in the absence of it. Contact.

Contact.


End file.
